Backup and recovery software products are crucial for enterprise level network clients. Customers rely on backup systems to efficiently back up and recover data in the event of user error, data loss, system outages, hardware failure, or other catastrophic events to allow business applications to remain in service or quickly come back up to service after a failure condition or an outage. The advent of virtualization technology has led to the increased use of virtual machines as data storage targets. Virtual machine (VM) disaster recovery systems using hypervisor platforms, such as a vSphere or ESXi platform from VMware or Hyper-V from Microsoft, among others, have been developed to provide recovery from multiple disaster scenarios including total site loss. The immense amount of data involved in large-scale (e.g., municipal, enterprise, etc.) level backup applications and the number of different potential problems that exist means that backup performance and reliable operation is a critical concern for system administrators.
To achieve server virtualization in cloud computing environments, users are moving towards using hypervisors that can be used to deploy multiple virtual machines (VMs). This helps to keep costs low, facilitates easier management of machines, and allows for expansion of infrastructure on demand. Virtualized storage systems, such as Hyper-V servers are being rapidly and increasingly deployed in customer's environments. In order to achieve high availability Hyper-V virtual machines are often configured in a clustered environment with the data stored on CSV (cluster shared volume) based systems. The size of these deployments is growing by the day, thus introducing significant challenges in protecting cloud infrastructures as networks scale up in size.
At present, backup systems and methods are not necessarily optimized for cloud networks using large numbers of virtual machines. For example, in a clustered environment, it is necessary to undertake several complicated process steps. First, in an example Hyper-V network, the administrator must install a backup application on a Hyper-V cluster to protect the Hyper-V environment. Next, application agent or agents are installed on each VM in the Hyper-V cluster to protect application/applications. This step is required to take an application consistent backup. Although Microsoft Windows provide the VSS infrastructure to take application consistent backups, this works well in case of standalone application backups, but if the application is a clustered/distributed one, there needs to be synchronization between the participating nodes for performing the backup operation. In this case backup agents need to be present on the participating nodes to synchronize and perform the backup operation. Backup agents are also needed for non-Microsoft or open source applications (for example, MySQL). At the backup server, the following configuration is required: (1) create Hyper-V cluster clients (One client for each participating node in backup) to protect the Hyper-V environment, and (2) create VMs clients to protect applications.
In present systems the backup workflow is similarly complicated. It requires a backup agent to be installed on each VM, and for each new VM created, the backup administrator needs to install a backup agent inside. When the backup operation starts on the Hyper-V server, the backup process on the Hyper-V server contacts the backup agent installed inside the VM to take the applications to a consistent state. The backup process then copies the data to the backup media.
Present backup methods are especially problematic for purposes of scaling up VM networks. If a system has multiple VMs on a Hyper-V cluster with multiple applications installed then it is necessary to install backup agents on multiple VMs. During installation the system administrator needs to know which application agent needs to be installed on a VM. If a new application is installed on the same VM later then a new application agent needs to be installed. Multiple configurations are required on the backup server for all the VMs to enable backup of participating VMs. Multiple backups need to be started and monitored in the backup application, and the administrator needs to analyze logs at multiple locations in case of error. This is obviously a complicated solution that is tedious and introduces a great deal of configuration overhead and possibility for error. Scalability is also an issue as the backup and maintenance of N number of clients becomes very difficult in case of a scaled-out cloud environment.
What is needed is a backup system that implements a more cloud-friendly paradigm to fully enable cloud capabilities. That would make the backup process agile, flexible and help keep up the demands made by cloud infrastructure while keeping the data safe as per the customer recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO).
What is further needed is a backup technology that needs no management intervention from backup administrator as new Virtual Machines are created in the cloud, and that supports latest hypervisor technologies available for customers, so that they can leverage the features that new technologies provide while keeping their data safe in cloud environments.
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